Tuesday, June 1, 2010

I've Got Plans...


...Big Plans, I say!


It's a quote from a children's book we borrowed from the library some time ago and I say it all the time. "I've got Plans! Big Plans, I say!"

The book is about a little boy with dreams bigger than he is and how he's knocked down and discouraged every where he turns, but he refuses to give up.

I've got Plans! Big Plans, I say!

When discussing all my summer goals recently, Hubby encouraged me to consider the '3 balls in your pocket' approach ~ meaning, focus on just 3 things at a time to be successful.

I've got Plans! Big Plans, I say!

But I pared them down into 3 major categories. So here's my bucket list, at least in a nutshell:

I. Schedule

A. Smart Start Mondays: Each Monday morning, the kids have an allotted time to complete homework geared towards preparing them for the upcoming year in school. For the twins, we bought several Kumon workbooks related to higher level addition and subtraction, multiplication, beginning division, and decimals. For Meiners, I gave him the packets the kids' second grade teacher sent home for them. It's a sad truth. My going-to-be-first grader can do the math the teachers sent home for practice for my going-to-be-third graders. I don't need busy work. I want them to learn something new. So the kindergartner (sorry, the first-grader-to-be) is going to be doing second grade math. Because he can.

By the way, last year we tried to do 'Smart Starts' - or a li'l bit of homework each morning. We failed. I've found expecting them to do school work in one intense 30-minute or-so session and then periodically as they desire it through the week far outweiged the success of a li'l bit each day. But that's just us.

B. Traveling Tuesdays - we're in for a St. Louis StayCay again this summer, so we're researching places to go within a day's travel from home. Like the Abe Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL. We brought home two books from the store today - Who Was Abe Lincoln, and You Wouldn't Want to be a Civil War Soldier to prepare for that upcoming trip. Other trips are the now-annual ferry ride (re-visited from a successful travel day last summer), to the arch, and possibly Chuck E. Cheese.

C. Friends on Friday. It's an all day swim party. They invite the friends.

II. Nutrition ~ This one's going to be tough because I'm the only one on board.
A. Increase our intake of water as a whole.
B. The new fruit and vegetable per week club.
C. Meatless Meals ~ at least twice per week.
D. And, for myself, cut waaaaaaaaaaaay back on the Bread Co.


III. Exercise
A. Get Out.
B. Get Fast
C. Tone Flabby Arms through weight-lifting.

Other items not previously listed for myself include daily Bible study with my Good Morning Girls group and improving my photo editing/photography skills in general.

The kids each made their own bucket lists this morning, including their much-anticipated-We're NOT-Moving Party!! And they will be watching faaaaar less TV and reading waaaaaay more books. We brought home about 40 new ones from the library this morning.


It's going to be a great summer!
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